


become impersonal (by transforming into sand, into water, into light)

by this_amaranthine_heart



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019), Sanditon - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sidlotte is background at best, Sidney's response to Mrs. Campion saying that they've been given a second chance at happiness, also this fic turned out to be lowkey dedicated to Marianne Dashwood, and why seventeen year olds maybe don't know everything there is about romance, the missing scene from episode 7, this is about the mourning of past love and the process of moving on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 16:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21018902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_amaranthine_heart/pseuds/this_amaranthine_heart
Summary: After ten years of waiting for Eliza, Sidney finds that she's no longer what he wants.(The missing 1x07 scene.)





	become impersonal (by transforming into sand, into water, into light)

_“You know, you didn’t have to wait for me.” _

_“I’ve waited ten years, what’s another quarter of an hour? The truth is, now that I’ve found you again, I can scarcely bring myself to let you out of my sight.” _

_“Eliza, I--” _

_“You know, I never lost hope that we would stand beside each other once more. Here we are; fate has gifted us a second chance.” _

Sidney looked at her squarely--really looked, as he had been trying to keep himself from doing all day. He had known what he would see there; he had known it as they walked on the sand and she spoke of salacious London gossip and an endless litany of soirees, had known it as she slighted Miss Heywood on the beach and again in the tent. Eliza had grown vain, spiteful, and cunning--but then, had she grown into these traits, or had they always been there? Had he missed all along a cold calculation in her eyes as she weighed him against her other suitors?

He had thought of her as ‘Eliza’ for so long now; even after she broke off the engagement, he had drunkenly whispered her name aloud late at night while in the Caribbean, caressing it like a secret. He had hated and worshipped her by turns. Of course he had known that she had used him callously, but hadn’t he still spent the better part of a decade dreaming that she would one day be free again? Hadn’t he longed, as he had never longed for anything before or since, that she would one day offer her hand to him once more, just as she was doing now? In all those years, he had refused to ever think of her as ‘Mrs. Campion’. Mrs. Campion was the wife of another man. Mrs. Campion was the name of an acquaintance known no better to him than anyone else in London society. Mrs. Campion was worse than a stranger and worse than lost to him. He couldn’t bear to think of his own dear Eliza that way. Instead, he had clung to her Christian name fiercely, knowing that it was the only thing left of her. As long as he could still think of her as Eliza, there was still some tether between them.

But she had not been waiting for him these past ten years, whatever she might claim. If she had really wanted him, she’d need never have waited at all. He had already been hers, with their nuptials close at hand, when she’d broken off their engagement without warning for a man richer and older. There was no tether between them. He was the one who had waited for her; he was the one who had stagnated for nearly half his life while she climbed the rungs of English society. She had no right to speak of having found him again when it was she who had discarded their intimacy to begin with. She’d not even sought him out in the first months after she’d left half-mourning, as she might have done if she’d really regretted her first match as much as she claimed. She’d come back to him now--now, of all moments--because his wealth was beginning to be talked of in society, as was his guardianship of Georgiana.

And strange, too, that he could see now how little they had really known each other. He had never shown Eliza the worst of himself; he had failed to see the worst of her. It was so different from his every interaction with Charlotte Heywood--he and Miss Heywood had known each other’s faults, intimately, before anything else. But along with his faults, maybe he had never shown Eliza any of the other secret parts of himself either: he had been so taken with the beautiful Miss Eliza when he met her, and they had done little in the early days of their courtship but flirt and laugh. They had spun their way through endless ballrooms, chatting giddily, with the world seemingly open to them for the first time. They had been so young; how could he have forgotten that? He had been only seventeen; she, a year younger than him. It had felt, then, that they spoke of everything, but had they?

With the wisdom and space of a decade, Sidney found it harder to blame a girl of six and ten for leaving him for a man with thrice his wealth. Sidney had been a second son and uncertain of his prospects; surely Eliza’s family had pushed her to make the better of the two matches. She had always been a high-spirited, pretty girl, and he could see the appeal of a marriage to Campion must have held for her. Instantly she had been a part of the best circles in London society, and her charm and wit had quickly made her the center of every ball. It was obvious how she had bloomed in that environment.

He softened, for a moment; her eyes were still wide, her curls still tugging loose from her bonnet. He could see so clearly in her the girl he had loved so well and for so long. Voice breaking, he whispered, “Eliza--”

Her lips curved, triumphant, as she heard the roughness in his voice. He saw the confidence glinting in her eyes, and he was reminded again, suddenly and coldly, of how certain she was that he would come back to her. She was utterly convinced that she could crook her finger and that he would come back to her even now, after so much time and so much hurt. He remembered Arthur’s warning, and he knew that he couldn’t afford to trust Eliza again.

Eliza had been cruel to Miss Heywood; Sidney wasn’t sure whether it was worse if she had done it knowingly, recognizing Sidney’s attachment to the younger woman, or if she had done it unthinkingly, delighted to embarrass a stranger in front of dozens for the sake of a laugh. The first possibility infuriated him on Charlotte’s behalf--for she was Charlotte sometimes now, in his mind, secretly and thrillingly--the second reminded him, with cold clarity, of his own worst impulses. Impulses that he had determined to curb; impulses that Charlotte had laid out bare before him to his unending shame.

It did not matter if Eliza really had loved him ten years ago; it did not even matter if she still truly carried affection for him now. Whoever she had been ten years before, it did not change the reality of who she was now. Her years of wealth and the _ton_ had left her mercenary in her affections and excruciatingly aware of the perceptions of others. She had wielded her power over those in the tent as precisely and ruthlessly as a general in the field. In some ways, he and Eliza were a chasm apart--in their taste for London society, for example--and perhaps that in and of itself was enough to mean that they would never suit. But what really worried Sidney was all the ways in which he and Eliza mirrored one another. He knew the calculated cruelty in her because it was the same one he had so often lashed out with himself. Hadn’t he himself delighted in crushing Miss Heywood with a few concise remarks? All the attributes that he now wished to leave in the past were the things that Eliza would encourage in him. Marriage to Eliza would bring all his faults back out of him redoubled, and he could not afford to regress.

Loving Eliza unrequitedly was at the center of who he was; it was madness to be forced to leave that behind. But it was something that he had to do.

He couldn’t afford to think of her as Eliza any longer. Neither of them was still recognizable as the children they had been when they first played at love, and he couldn’t afford to cling to his old affection in the face of the woman she was now. Eliza had been a well-frayed dream; Mrs. Campion was someone he wasn’t sure he had ever even met.

And there was the future to think of: the new and startling fervor that Charlotte Heywood was always whipping up in him. However much Eliza might drag Sidney back to the past and his worst aspects of himself, Charlotte was pushing him forward to become someone new and better. The easy companionship he had found in their conversations was letting him unbend little by little. Looking at Eliza now, he was startled by the contrast in the two women.

Sidney drew himself up, feeling his armor settle around him as he met Eliza’s eyes. Part of him mourned for her and for what they had been once, but he felt certain now of his decision.

“Perhaps this was a second chance, but it was you who threw away our first one. I will remain here in Sanditon a while longer.” He took in a breath, and then repeated his earlier statement. “Just now. You didn’t have to wait for me.”

She did not pretend to misunderstand his meaning, shock flooding her expression for a moment before her eyes dropped to the ground and he could not ascertain any of her other feelings. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were hard; her barriers were up. “I see, Sidney. I suppose that this is about that ragged hair governess?”

Sidney’s temper flared even as he recognized in her the same fury which he had lashed out with when she broke their engagement years before. Of course she had recognized the tender feeling he bore Charlotte; of course she had masked her hurt with her jealousy. But what she failed to comprehend was that Sidney had found a kindred spirit in Charlotte.

He knew that it was unwise to rise to her bait, but when it came to Eliza he had always been too reckless.

“Mrs. Campion, it strikes me that you and I never spoke much of books while we were engaged, so it is not your fault for missing this secret. But I fear that your jab earlier was gravely miscalculated. I am, myself, quite fond of Heraclitus.”

**Author's Note:**

> I thought that this was going to be an angry dialogue, but it turned out that I have a lot more sympathy for Mrs. Campion than I'd realized.
> 
> I was really disappointed that we didn't get to see the conversation between Mrs. Campion and Sidney; even if he's no longer in love with her / is now in love with Charlotte, it doesn't change the fact that Mrs. Campion is a huge part of his story. She's why he ran away to the Caribbean; she is (apparently) the reason for his cold behavior towards others. The decision not to marry her is hugely impactful, but the series doesn't present it. I also wasn't interested in that conversation being about Charlotte; it's about Sidney and his own development. So here's what I've got.
> 
> Title is from Dejan Stojanović's quote, "it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light."


End file.
